Hope turns to dust in the middle of nowhere

A refugee woman pushes her 12-year-old son with cerebral palsy in a tiny infant's stroller over a rocky path in the remote Curtin detention centre. When she reaches the accommodation hut the woman must lift her son on to the bed, as there is no winch and nobody to help. She does this day in and day out for a year.

Only when complaints are made to the Immigration Department is she supplied with a wheelchair.

Bad memories of isolation and uncertainty ... detainees gather after a building at Curtin is set alight in March 2001.

Elsewhere in Curtin's Charlie compound a lone mother of the Sabian Mandaean faith who shares quarters with 43 Muslim men lives with her daughter in fear of being raped for four months. Complaints made by Amnesty to Immigration authorities that she had been sexually assaulted and harassed were initially ignored. An independent investigation later found immigration officials failed to adequately protect the woman and her daughter and ordered their department to pay her $15,000 in compensation for the months of trauma.

Professor Sev Ozdowski, of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and author of the landmark report on children in detention, recalls Curtin as the most wretched of all the detention centres he investigated. News this month that the Rudd government will reopen the much-criticised facility has brought memories flooding back. On his first visit, a man desperate to have his case reviewed by the commission, threatened to hang himself. "Of course I spoke to the man, I realised it was the nature of prolonged detention that caused his mental anguish," Ozdowski told the Herald.

Incidents of self-harm, attempted suicide and violent riots exacerbated by the isolation and the uncertainty of prolonged detention were commonplace in Curtin along with the poisonous snakes that found their way into the primitive bathrooms and toilets. Chris Sidoti, a human rights lawyer and the human rights commissioner who preceded Ozdowski, said the RAAF base was "totally inappropriate" for holding refugees. "It was overcrowded, the education facilities for children were virtually non-existent. People had nothing to do. It was a lethal recipe for depression and unrest."

Zachary Steel, a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of NSW, who studied the mental health of 10 families held at the West Australia detention centre said his research confirmed Curtin as a "psychiatric catastrophe".

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Steel says children were exposed to acts of self-harm including an incident where a man disembowelled himself. Many former detainees are still suffering from their time at Curtin. According to a spokesman for the Sabian Mandaean Association, the Mandaean woman who was sexually harassed suffers from acute disorientation.

Ozdowski still remembers his first trip to Curtin, located near Derby and built on an air force base in the 1990s. He thought, as his plane touched down, that this was the ideal place to keep asylum seekers "out of sight and out of mind". Because it was not a purpose-built centre and was operated by the private security company ACM, there were no mental health services.

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When the Howard government mothballed Curtin in late 2002 after constant adverse publicity and protest the centre could accommodate 1200 people. A mental health study published in Social Science and Medicine journal found that years later the majority of refugees surveyed were struggling to rebuild their lives.

So what persuaded the Rudd government to reopen the most notorious of detention centres? There had been no bigger critic of indefinite mandatory detention and delays in refugee processing than the ALP when it was in opposition.

The Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, is not giving away any extra details about the decision. Repeated requests for an interview came to nothing. Earlier this year, in a speech to the Sydney Institute, Evans outlined a compassionate analysis of the surge in "irregular maritime arrivals" saying it was consistent with what was happening globally and in Asia. He called for a comprehensive integrated approach to that tackled the "root causes''. No mention of Curtin being reopened to accommodate 260 single men and no mention of inordinate delays in processing applications. Inquiries reveal, however, that the decision to reopen Curtin had been endorsed by Kevin Rudd and was a response to intelligence warnings that the spike in boat arrivals would continue throughout this election year.

A big influx of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers into Indonesia has created a thriving people smuggling industry operated by locals rather than Middle Eastern brokers. A senior government official who declined to be identified said: "The explanation is simple. It's election year and Rudd panicked. Christmas Island was built for 400, it now has over 2000. Rudd decided to send a message in the hope that the flow of boats will slow."

But there is no sign of that despite the best efforts of the federal police. Some boats have been stopped, but many more are getting through. According to the UNHCR there are 2266 asylum seekers in Indonesia, 783 of them registered refugees. A year ago there were just 616 asylum seekers and 441 refugees. In the space of 12 months the numbers have exploded and recent intelligence suggests the figures may be far greater. Not everybody registers with the UNHCR.

Afghan asylum seekers from Pakistan are believed to make up a significant number of recent arrivals, straining the already crowded facilities on Christmas Island. Many are said to be Hazara refugees fleeing Quetta - a Pakistani regional city under the dominant influence of the powerful insurgent group Quetta Shura Taliban. Ethnic Hazaras fled to Quetta a decade earlier to escape Taliban repression in Afghanistan.

"Hazaras say Quetta is not safe any more and Australia is, it's as simple as that," an Afghan source on Christmas Island said. "They also know from friends and relatives that opportunities for asylum are limited in Europe. With mobile phones word spreads fast."

It's a situation Philip Ruddock, Howard's immigration minister, is all too familiar with. ''I think Evans looked at all the sites available and saw that Curtin was closer to Christmas Island and more out of the way … There is less scrutiny in a place like Curtin." Ruddock says people forget the extraordinary circumstances governments face when one day there are no boat arrivals and the next month they are coming in waves.

"These people don't make a booking before they come. No doubt when I open my mouth Rudd will say well look at Ruddock, look how inhumane he was."

The Herald understands the government also examined plans to reopen Baxter, a purpose-built detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia but recently ruled it out. Located on Defence land, Baxter was handed back to the army when boat arrivals declined to a trickle. Ruddock says it would make sense to reopen Baxter as it has recreational and schooling facilities and is built in such away that detainees are not forced congregate in one area.

During his time as minister Ruddock said he got to understand just how highly sophisticated people smuggling operations were. Informants in Australia and Indonesia provide instant feedback on policy changes, track clients through the immigration system and bribe officials in Jakarta.

Although Ruddock does not say it, the decision to locate all offshore processing on Christmas Island within easy reach of Indonesia also shortened the journey and reduced the risks at sea.

The senior government official said: "Christmas Island was a costly mistake. The boats no longer have to reach mainland Australia, they just have to make it half way. The Australian navy does the rest."

So what is the answer? It is hard to find anyone who believes reopening Curtin to warehouse Sri Lankan and Afghan male asylum seekers behind razor wire will have any impact on boat arrivals. And in the old Curtin there were clashes between Muslims and non-Muslim. But with people smuggling a thriving industry in Indonesia, the government is running short of options.

Zachary Steel says prolonged detention will increase the number of damaged refugees society has to deal with. "The research is overwhelming. There have been five studies in Australia and multiple studies overseas that prolonged immigration detention leads to a rapid deterioration in mental health through a collective depression syndrome."

Ozdowski, an expert on international refugee law, said successive governments had adopted a cavalier attitude to boat arrivals and the moratorium violated international conventions. Prolonged detention is counterproductive. "My view is that if you lock them up for half a year in the Hilton Hotel, the results will be exactly the same as if they were at Curtin or Baxter. When you suspend due process for people, it creates a disabling uncertainty. The issue is not the buildings in a direct sense, but the long period of not knowing what your fate will be."

Sidoti argues the government's position is unsustainable. He says that once asylum seekers are accepted the government has a legal obligation to process their claims within 90 days at which point there should be a case-by-case assessment. "The government cannot have it both ways; they cannot say 'we are not going to process the claims, and we are not going to release people into the community either'."

And Ruddock contends it is probably too late for Rudd to turn back the clock, that the moratorium will not deter people smugglers preying on refugees because they know that 80 per cent of claims eventually will be recognised. "Evans sending people to Curtin is not going to deter anybody. Indonesia sees Australia's so-called more humane approach as providing the sugar and the closure of Nauru as putting more sugar on the table."

He predicts that if Baxter is not reopened, Evans will soon be casting around for another disused Defence site to accommodate not just those trapped in the system but the next wave of boat people. Curtin is first of the old discredited detention centres to be reopened; it is unlikely to be the last.